MMA fans around the country were wondering if the sport would ever be legalized in New York. For eight years the MMA bill passed the state Senate, but never could get to the Assembly floor for a vote. That all changed this year as the bill passed the Assembly by a 125-15 vote. On Thursday, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed the bill to officially make MMA legal once again in the country's biggest market. Subsequently, the UFC announced that UFC 205 would take place Nov. 12 at Madison Square Garden.
UFC CEO Lorenzo Fertitta was at the bill signing Thursday along with Ronda Rousey and former middleweight champion Chris Weidman. After the signing, Fertitta spoke to Sporting News on a variety of topics.
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SPORTING NEWS: What were you thinking when Gov. Cuomo was putting the pen to the paper?
LORENZO FERTITTA: Just that we finally got to New York. We put in a lot of hard work going to (the state capital) Albany. New York was obviously the last state that still hadn't regulated the sport. We continued to push and push and we had the feeling that someday this would happen. Obviously it did happen. To be honest with you, I was thinking that I never realized that when they sign laws into bills that they actually use about 10 pens for each letter (laughs).
SN: Were you like, "Can we get this over already?" or (were you) biding your time?
LF: No, it was fun. I took it all in. The governor had been a big advocate for us for many, many years. We had passed through the state Senate eight years in a row and we were always very confident if we were able to just get a vote in the Assembly that it would pass by a wide margin. I think one of the misnomers out there was the sense that the state legislature in New York didn't want MMA and that couldn't be farther from the truth. Every time we would go to Albany and talk to legislators, they wanted to spend more time asking for pictures of our athletes or getting autographs. There was never any discussion or debate whether MMA should be legalized. Those who didn't voice their opinion and come out against MMA were essentially the vocal minority. You look at the votes. They passed 125-15. It was an absolute landslide. You don't see many bills or laws coming into effect with that big of margin. That's why we knew. It was just a matter of time. We just had to be patient.
SN: Did you always have faith this would happen — did you question yourself as to whether this would actually go through?
LF: No, I knew it would eventually happen (laughs). It was just a matter of how long it would really take at the end of the day. Honestly, you do get frustrated. You get frustrated after two, three, four, five years and you're going, "Wow, is this thing really going to happen?" What are we up against? Are we missing something? What are we up against here? Are we missing something? Because this doesn't seem to make sense. But, eventually once the previous speaker (Sheldon Silver) was no longer in power, things came together actually very quickly and it all started to make sense.
SN: What does it mean to you and the UFC to finally have an event at Madison Square Garden?
LF: It's huge for the sport of mixed martial arts, it's huge for the brand of the UFC. The Garden is the mecca of sports and we are glad to finally have a card there.
SN: When it was announced last month MMA would be legalized in the state, rumors surfaced that Ronda Rousey would be returning to face Holly Holm in a rematch at the MSG show in lieu of Miesha Tate defending her bantamweight title against Amanda Nunes at UFC 200. Are those rumors true?
LF: In all honesty, we haven't even discussed that fight being there. We haven't even discussed who would be on the show. Conor McGregor called me earlier saying he wants to be on the show. I was like, "Yeah, yeah, I will think about it." (laughs)
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SN: Obviously a lot of fighters want to be on this show considering its significance. Do you have ideas on who could be on the card?
LF: Obviously we would like to have fighters from the New York area and our athletes who have been championing for us in New York like Chris Weidman, Aljamain Sterling and Dennis Bermudez, but that will depend on their fight schedues and how healthy they are coming out of their next fights. I wish we could have announced a card today but we are still almost seven months away from the show. I anticipate we will be announcing fights around the time of UFC 200, maybe the Friday before the show.
SN: Fans and media are talking about what will be the bigger event, UFC 200 or UFC 205. In your mind, what is the bigger event?
LF: UFC 200 is a huge event. We have the rematch between Conor McGregor and Nate Diaz; Miesha Tate defends her title and Frankie Edgar faces Jose Aldo for the interim featherweight title. We plan on putting as big of a card for the Garden show as UFC 200.
Steven Muehlhausen is an MMA and boxing writer and contributor for Sporting News. You can find his podcast, The Fight Club Chicago, and subscribe on iTunes, Soundcloud and Stitcher. You can email him at [email protected] and can find him on Twitter @SMuehlhausenMMA.
